Five People Mover Stations will look a lot more colorful in the next few months.
In an effort to make downtown Detroit look more “welcoming” ahead of the NFL Draft in April, the City Walls program has commissioned five local artists to paint murals along the People Mover.
Participating artists are Nicole Macdonald, Fe’le, Anthony Lee, Charles Martin Miller, and Nick Pizaña.
The murals will be painted outside of the Greektown, Michigan Ave., West Riverfront, Broadway, and Fort Street stations with Detroit themes like odes to Paradise Valley and Motown. Lee’s mural sketch includes portraits of Detroit singers and performers like Aretha Franklin, Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross, and Eminem.
City Walls Project Manager Bethany Howard says it was important to choose murals that would continue to appeal to residents long after the expected 1,000,000 visitors during the NFL Draft leave.
“We wanna highlight all the things that make Detroit, Detroit,” Howard tells Metro Times. “We want something that excites residents for sure. There’s this really exciting and busy thing going on. We need some murals downtown to spice it up or to make it more appealing for the visitors but again, the residents are going to have to see this more than any of these people [that are] coming in for this draft.”
The artists were chosen by a panel of art professionals including Sabrina Nelson, Ivan Montoya, and Library Street Collective Director Leah Rutt, along with residents and city workers.
Since the murals need to be completed before the NFL Draft arrives on April 25, Howard says the artists will have to paint on any moderately warm days in the next few months due to Michigan’s unpredictable weather.
Unlike the Street Art for Mankind (SAM) murals in downtown Detroit, which caused a stir in the local art scene because they were painted by international artists with no vetting process, the People Mover pieces will all be done by Detroit-based artists as part of the City Walls program. The SAM “Be the Change” murals were authorized without City Council approval and the council has since refused to pay the $215,000 bill for the completed pieces. A second phase featuring Detroit artists has since been canceled.
Each artist in the People Mover project will be given a stipend between $7,500 and $40,000 depending on the size of the wall. Howards says the artists were chosen for this project based on their body of work, mural concept, and relationship to Detroit.
“Once we go into scoring the rubric is usually if they’re a Detroit-based artist, because you know, we like to do local things around here,” she says.
City Walls is also spearheading two other public art initiatives ahead of the NFL draft.
For a project called DCLEATED, 20 Michigan artists will paint football cleats to be placed at the Detroit Metro Airport, Coleman A. Young Municipal Airport, and hotels like the Westin Book Cadillac and Cambria Hotel downtown. The painted cleats will be auctioned off with all proceeds going to charities or local organizations chosen by the artists. While the 20 artists have yet to be announced, some organizations that will benefit from the sales include New Era Detroit, North American Indian Association, Gleaners Community Food Bank, and Blight Busters.
Then there’s the YMCA Call to Peace Mural Project in collaboration with the YMCA Metropolitan Detroit and SpaceLab Detroit. Trae Isaac was selected from an open call to paint the YMCA and his planned mural depicts a diverse group of faces surrounding the Spirit of Detroit and the YMCA’s pool.
Subscribe to Metro Times newsletters.
Follow us: Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter
